Response and legislative changes after the Kiss nightclub tragedy in Santa Maria/RS/Brazil: Learning from a large-scale burn disaster
Introduction
A major fire occurred on January 27, 2013, at 02:30 at Kiss nightclub in the city of Santa Maria, State of Rio Grande do Sul, in Southern Brazil. Whereas the club had an area of 615 m2 and a estimated capacity for 700 people, it was overcrowded with 1200–1300 people attending a musical show at the time of the tragedy. A total of 230 victims died on-site due asphyxiation, carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning, while an additional 12 individuals died during hospitalization. Most of these victims were university students aged between 18 and 21 years of age [1]. By number of fatalities, the Santa Maria burn mass casualty incident (MCI) ranked as the fifth largest tragedy and the second largest fire incident in Brazil over the last 50 years. The largest burn MCI occurred in Niteroi in Rio de Janeiro in December 1961, during a show at the Gran Circus North American. This event accounted for 503 deaths, and was attributed to arson [2].
Following the Santa Maria burn MCI, Brazilian authorities have enacted major legislative changes to prevent similar large-scale disasters in the future. Specifically in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where the fire occurred, a state law called “Law Kiss”, was drafted after the incident, and was approved in December 2013 and signed into law in January 2014 [3]. In this retrospective report, we aimed to describe the nightclub fire event, its immediate aftermath, and evaluated its impact on legislation. Our objective was to disseminate the lessons we learned from this large-scale nightclub fire disaster.
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted a literature review in PubMed/Medline and Lilacs databases related to medical subject headings (MeSH) [results; inclusion data]: the Kiss nightclub [3;3], Santa Maria [104, they are authors’ surnames;0], burn disaster [317;22], mass casualty incidents [549;9], legislation and law, from 2013 to 2015. We intersected our search between burn disaster and mass casualty incidents [123;7], burn disaster and legislation [26;0] and burn disaster and law [28;0]. We also searched similar
Incident, emergency response and outcomes
The fire started around 02:30 AM at the Kiss nightclub when the performing band attempted to use fireworks. The use of flares for pyrotechnic effects during the show was the immediate cause of the fire. Whereas flares are designed for use in open spaces, in this case a member of the band lit a flare and took aim at the ceiling. Flames then quickly engulfed the nightclub foam ceiling used for sound-proofing. The fire extinguisher did not work when one of the musicians tried to use it, and the
Discussion
The similarities of the Santa Maria disaster with previous events worldwide draw our attention to effective preventive measures, which can only be achieved through legislation and strict enforcement. Although many disaster plan optimizations could be implemented and refined following the Santa Maria disaster, we believe that legislation toward prevention is the single-most important lesson we have collectively learned. In Brazil, public gathering places still do not have effective crowd
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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